44 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. All Boys lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Almagro waiting with a shirt. Nobody at All Boys is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Benjamín González was one of the reasons people came, and $780.0K does not replace that by itself.
Everything agreed with Atlético Tucumán, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Atlético Tucumán keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Jean Acevedo was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The words a physio says slowly. 53 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Juan Marcoccia will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around All Boys the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gabriel Ramírez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Marco Iacobellis is on it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at All Boys, and both men came out saying it was fine.
One weekend, judged against everybody else's. Gabriel Ramírez has come out on top of it, and for most footballers a weekly award is the only silverware a career ever produces.
Risadinha is 19, and for one weekend he was the best of everybody his age in the division. Nobody should build a career on it and everybody quietly does.
67 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. All Boys lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Everybody at All Boys saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 36 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑1, Juan Martín Rojas could afford to be generous.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at All Boys, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at All Boys this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Emiliano Purita is on it.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at All Boys has been clear about where Mauro Medina stands, which is more than many ever get.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Nehemías Zubiaurre trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The shrug has gone, the language is coming, and he now argues in training like somebody who expects to be here next year. Half a signing's value is this and none of it appears on a fee.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at All Boys, and it is not being withdrawn.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.90 at 37, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Lucas Cano. 2‑1 against Ferro Carril Oeste, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Tomás González has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Carlos Rey has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Tomás Ibáñez is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what All Boys can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at All Boys this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at All Boys, and 1 appearances in 32 say he has earned the hearing.
“Every summer it is another club, another set of team-mates, another manager to convince. I have done all that. Now I want a pre-season at All Boys and a proper look at me.” He remains Villa Dálmine’s player until the spell runs out — but the argument is with the club that owns him.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Luciano Leguizamón was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He is doing his job and he is not settling. All Boys were supposed to be a step up in his own reckoning, and his own reckoning has been adjusted since he arrived.
Risadinha is 17, and All Boys have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager has not finished forgetting Alejo Rodríguez's mistake